Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Inscribed altar to Pan in ancient church wall

GREEK EPIGRAPHY: Altar to Greek god found in wall of Byzantine church raises questions. This excavation is now focusing on figuring out how this pagan altar came to be part of the church wall and what the inscription on it means (Hannah Brown, Jerusalem Post).

I noted here the recent discovery in the Golan Heights of the Byzantine-era church built over a Pan sanctuary. This is the first I have heard of the inscribed altar.

Derelict stone buildings have typically been dismantled and the stones reused in antiquity and even more recently. Here in St. Andrews, the ruins of the cathedral were scavenged for stones after it was ransacked by John Knox and his friends. The stones are scattered around the town in other stone buildings.

Cathedral of St. Andrews
By e6La3BaNo - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12350992

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